When will Trump voters realize theyve been had? This historian has some answers

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/when-will-trump-voters-realize-theyve-been-had-this-historian-has-some-answers/

"...Liberals, hang in there! Not all is actually as grim as it seems. Nate Silver reports that the number of Americans who strongly support Trump has fallen from 30 percent to around 22 percent since February. “Far from having unconditional love from his base,” Silver observes, “Trump has already lost almost a third of his strong support.” Even better, “voters who strongly disapprove of Trump outnumber those who strongly approve of him by about a 2-to-1 ratio.”

History suggests it’s unrealistic to expect people to change their minds quickly. This is a pattern that has held for centuries. In the 1600s the Salem witch trials dragged on for eight long months before townsfolk finally began to realize that they had been caught up in an irrational frenzy. More recently, Americans proved during Watergate that they are reluctant to turn on a president they have just elected despite mounds of evidence incriminating him in scandalous practices. The Watergate burglary took place on June 17, 1972. But it wasn’t until April 30, 1973 – eleven months later – that his popularity finally fell below 50 percent. This was long after the Watergate burglars had been tried and convicted and the FBI had confirmed news reports that the Republicans had played dirty tricks on the Democrats during the campaign. Leaked testimony had even showed that former Attorney General John Mitchell knew about the break-in in advance. But not until Nixon fired White House Counsel John Dean and White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resigned did a majority turn against the president. And even at that point Nixon’s poll numbers stood higher than Trump’s. Nixon: 48 percent; Trump: 42 percent."

"...So what leads people to finally change their minds? One of the most convincing explanations is provided by the Theory of Affective Intelligence. This mouthful of a name refers to the tendency of people experiencing cognitive dissonance to feel anxiety when they do so. As social scientist George Marcus has explained, when the burden of hanging onto an existing opinion becomes greater than the cost of changing it, we begin to reconsider our commitments. What’s the trigger? Anxiety. When there’s a mismatch between our views of the way the world works and reality we grow anxious. This provokes us to make a fresh evaluation.

What this research suggests is that we probably have a ways to go before Trump voters are going to switch their opinions. While some are evidently feeling buyers’ remorse, a majority aren’t. They’re just not anxious enough yet. Liberals need not worry. The very same headlines that are giving them an upset stomach are making it more and more likely Trump voters are also experiencing discomfort. What might push them over the edge? One possibility would be a decision to follow through on his threat to end subsidies to insurance companies under Obamacare, leading to the collapse of the system, and the loss of coverage for millions of Trump voters. That’s become more and more likely since the Senate is apparently unable to pass the repeal and replace measure Trump has been counting on. So liberals just have to wait and watch. Will the story unfold like Watergate? Every day the answer increasingly seems yes."